Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
| Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars | |
|---|---|
| File:C&C3logo.jpg | |
| Developer(s) | EA Los Angeles |
| Publisher(s) | EA Games |
| Designer(s) | Jason Bender |
| Engine | Strategy Action Game Engine (SAGE) |
| Platform(s) | PC (Windows) |
| Release | TBA, 2007 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars[1] is the long awaited sequel to Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. The game was announced shortly after the release of Command & Conquer: The First Decade. Taking place during the Third Tiberium War, the Brotherhood of Nod, now a superpower with a majority support of the world's population, launches a major offensive against the Global Defense Initiative, crippling their forces. With Nod looking likely to win this time, GDI commanders rally their troops, trying to restore lost hope.
Known facts
Like most games in development, the known facts for Tiberium Wars are few and far between. Although information on Tiberium Wars is still shaky, EA has released enough information for C&C fans to get a general idea of the game and its development.
The plot
The story begins in 2047, and the world is in an even worse condition than in Tiberian Sun. The spread of Tiberium continues to destroy the Earth, and the world has been divided into different zones. 30% of the Earth's surface is Tiberium-infested and inhospitable "Red Zones", 50% of the Earth is "Yellow Zones", areas where Nod is present and where Tiberium hasn't fully taken hold but is encroaching on the population, and the rest of the Earth is "Blue Zones", where it is safe to live and where GDI is present. The GDI is still trying to prevent the spread of Tiberium and convert the Yellow Zones to Blue Zones.
In March, Nod fires a nuclear missile at GDI's orbiting headquarters, the Philadelphia, destroying the fulcrum of GDI's military power. Since the end of the Second Tiberium War, Nod has built up its military into superpower status, and is now supported by the majority of the world's population through aid and propaganda. In no shape to handle the Nod offensives led by Black Hand shock troops around the globe, GDI commanders take charge, rallying their demoralized troops, hoping to win another victory over Nod.
Known units and structures
GDI
GDI is quite similar to conventional modern day armies, deploying well trained and well equipped soldiers backed up by powerful ground, air and naval assets to overwhelm the enemy in direct frontal assaults. Their army relies on superior protection and firepower making it more cumbersome than Nod's, which is something the Brotherhood is keen to exploit.
Infantry
- GDI Rifle Infantry
- GDI Grenadier
- GDI Rocket Soldier
- GDI Commando
- GDI Sniper
- GDI Zone Trooper (heavily armed soldier in a power armour suit who is immune to tiberium and who also has short range jumpjets, could be a replacement for the Wolverine from Tiberian Sun. It is possible that the power armour suit is an evolution of the Mobius Suit seen in Renegade).
- GDI Engineer
- GDI Medic
Ground Units
- GDI Mammoth Tank (heavy tank equipped with dual 150mm guns that can be upgraded to use rail guns instead of standard cannons, and will also have dual rocket pods to take on infantry and aircraft. An onboard engineer will slowly repair up to 50% of the tank's health)
- GDI Predator Light Tank (can be upgraded to have missile launchers on a side mount)
- GDI Juggernaut Artillery (triple barreled howitzer mounted on a bipedal mech)
- GDI Guardian APC
- GDI Pitbull Jeep
- GDI Rig (vehicle that can deploy into a landing and repair pad to act as a forward support outpost)
- GDI Mobile Construction Vehicle (deploys into a construction yard that allows the construction of buildings)
- GDI Tiberium Harvester
Aircraft
- GDI ORCA Gunship
- GDI Firehawk Jet (dual fighter/bomber)
- GDI V35 Ox Transporter
Naval Units
- GDI Aircraft Landing Ship
Buildings
- GDI Minigun defense turret (was originally a Component Tower with Vulcan upgrade as seen in a preview screenshot in PC Gamer issue 149, but this design seems to have been replaced with a minigun tower, as seen in the latest German GameStar magazine)
- GDI Construction Yard
- GDI Barracks
- GDI Tiberium Refinery
- GDI Warfactory
- GDI Airfield/ Helipad
- GDI Armoury (upgrade centre)
- GDI Tiberium Silo (stores tiberium when refinery is full, if destroyed the contained tiberium is lost and player will lose money)
- GDI Radar
- GDI Power Plant (can be upgraded to produce more energy)
NOD
The Brotherhood of Nod is a more diverse fighting force, using a mix of cheap and expendable units (such as the hordes of militants recruited from the desolate yellow zones) alongside highly advanced, though sometimes unstable, war machines (like the stealth tank and the avatar mech). They are a highly mobile force favouring hit and run attacks over direct assault, mixing cunning low tech guerilla warfare backed up by an elite core of soldiers armed with the latest high tech weaponry. Nod's tactics appear to be more cruel than GDI's, often showing little regard for human life, their fascination with tiberium also leads them to use this toxic substance offensively whenever possible.
Infantry
- Nod Militant (cheap cannon fodder recruited from yellow zones)
- Nod Fanatic (possibly a suicide unit?)
- Nod Rocket Soldier
- Nod Rifle Infantry
- Nod Shadow (glider equipped shock troops)
- Nod Black hand Commando (elite soldiers with high tech gear)
Ground Units
- Nod Stealth Tank
- Nod Flame Tank
- Nod Scorpion Tank
- Nod Beam cannon Artillery
- Nod Attack Bike
- Nod Raider Buggy
- Nod Avatar Warmech (can "pick up" weapon systems from other Nod units and integrate them to it's own to enhance it's firepower)
- Nod Tiberium Harvester
Aircraft
- Nod Venom Scout Aircraft
- Nod Vertigo Bomber
Buildings
- Hand of Nod
- Obelisk of Light
- Nod Tiberium Refinery
- Nod Tiberium Silo (stores tiberium when refinery is full, if destroyed the contained tiberium is lost and player will lose money)
There are several more Nod buildings seen in recent (23/08/06) gameplay movies but are yet to be named.
BOTH
- Side bar and construction yard method of building bases and units (third faction unknown) (1st of June’s 06 Podcast)
UNKNOWN
- Other familiar units will also be returning, although EA is staying tight lipped about which units those may be.
- It is speculated some units can cause ion storms. Nod and the 3rd faction have units that will be enhanced by Ion Storms occuring. GDI will likely be hindered by ion storms however.
Third side speculations
Once the player has completed both the GDI and Nod campaigns, they will be able to play a third mystery faction. The current speculations are:
- The Scrin: The faction with the best chance of being in the game. Appearing for the first time in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun in the form of a huge alien ship which is stolen and crashed by a rogue Nod commander after being taken out of a Nod bunker and later (Although earlier by game chronology) in Command & Conquer: Renegade as a crashed flying saucer, (Also in Command and Conquer in the form of an alien object in final GDI mission) not much is known about these beings, except that they are somehow connected to CABAL, Kane, Tiberium and its origin and distribution. Scrin technology is used in the Nod Banshee. Further evidence that this side is the third playable faction comes from the short teaser at the end of the E3 demo, in which the camera pans out to show a ravaged Earth from space, and the narrator says "And then, they came".
- The Forgotten: Appearing for the first time in C&C History in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, the Forgotten have been an integral part of the entire Tiberian storyline. The Forgotten were led by Tratos, until he was killed. Other major characters include Umagon (Dies from divination, as previously mentioned), Ghost Stalker and the Mutant Hijacker. In Tiberian Sun's expansion, Firestorm, the leader of The Forgotten was murdered by CABAL. The fate of the other two major Forgotten Characters remains unknown. They are more probable than the Scrin in the sense that they had an army (though it was cobbled together from different factions and oop unit) in Tiberian Sun.
.jpg){kind=link}
- CABAL (Computer Assisted Biologically Augmented Lifeform): Appearing in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and its expansion-Firestorm, CABAL is Nod's AI in charge of Cybernetic Development and Tiberium Evolution. After going rogue in Tiberian Sun's expansion, Firestorm, it has become known that CABAL is somehow connected to Nod's leader, Kane. The origin of these connections is unknown. The fate of CABAL after Firestorm is unknown. A damaged state of CABAL can be heard in C&C Renegade's last mission, inside the Temple of Nod. This is the most probable of all factions as concept art is already drawn for this and CABAL was made into a main army with unique units in Tiberian Sun. CABAL's army may contain solely of cyborg-based troops and tanks.
- Or, even possibly an entirely new faction. According to PC gamer, and according to pictures, it appears that there could be new units unknown to any of the speculations.
- Rumors that the third side could very well be Yuri, finally linking the Tiberian and Red Alert Universes have been mentioned in the PC game magazine. (although this is somewhat improbable as Yuri was either killed or stripped of his power and placed in prison at the end of Red Alert 2 Yuri's revenge.)
- There is also the possibility that the third faction is Kane brought back from the brink by CABAL at the end of firestorm. This hints that he may not actually be working with the brotherhood in the third game as CABAL betrayed NOD at the end of firestorm but still saves (and probably follows) Kane. This could also be seen as the CABAL faction in it that Kane and CABAL have a connection to one another.
The return of Kane
In a recently released trailer and picture, actor Joseph D. Kucan is seen portraying the Nod faction leader Kane.
Some of Kane's famous lines are:
"Peace through power." "Peace. Unity. Brotherhood." "You can't kill the messiah."
Other known facts
Other known facts about the game include:
- The return of full motion videos, after being notably absent in Command & Conquer: Renegade and Command & Conquer: Generals. [1]
- The return of resource harvesting and Mobile Construction Vehicles.
- It seems unlikely that Frank Klepacki, game music composer who did all Command & Conquer games except Generals, will do the music for Command & Conquer 3. Klepacki is currently a full-time employee at Petroglyph, and both himself and the EA Community Manager have stated that he is not on the game's development team nor has he been asked to join [2]. EA's community manager has also said that the team is aware of fan's concern, and that EA's audio team has been studying Klepacki's music for the past ten years, and fans will not be disappointed.
- Command & Conquer 3 will use the pre-Generals right sidebar interface, as revealed in an interview on IGN at this link: "It's also worth mentioning the return of the side-bar interface: Our in-game UI for C&C3 is a side-bar that will feel familiar to C&C players but it has some added features that make it more useful - and make it feel interesting and new. We are combining the centralized production queues in the classic C&C side-bar with contextual space for selected units and structures. The new UI lets you quickly build units and structures, easily control grouped units, and access your build queues anywhere on the map - even in the middle of a battle. But you can still get lots of information about your selected units and activate their special abilities - which are pretty much expected in the latest generation RTS games. We think our interface for C&C3 is the best of both worlds."
- The development team, with help from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has devised information to see how Tiberium would work in real-world science.
- AI will be improved and campaigns will be more immersive.
- A brand new version of SAGE (Strategy Action Game Engine) will be used.
- Multiplayer will feature VoIP support.
- There is a high chance the game will eventually be released for the Xbox 360, with Louis Castle stating "and I know for a fact that they [the developers of Battle For Middle Earth 2 on 360] are doing this because these are the same guys, the same team, who's doing Command & Conquer 3 and they're definitely going to release it for the 360, you heard it here. And so what they are doing is they are really using Battle for Middle-earth II to sort of use it as a spring board to test, to see, how it is going to work for Command & Conquer 3, so they are trying to almost use this BFMEII as a beta; a very good beta."
- EA is planning several fan summits for previews, feedback and discussions.
Background
A sequel to Tiberian Sun has been expected and hyped since after Tiberian Sun’s release way back in 1999. A hypothetical sequel was called "Tiberian Twilight" throughout the Command & Conquer community. Work on a sequel is believed to have been started at Westwood Studios in 2001, but Electronic Arts decided to shift the focus of a sequel from a science fiction theme to a modern theme based on current world conflicts. The work on a sequel was used to make Command & Conquer: Generals and other current Sage engine based games. Just before Generals was released, EA announced that Westwood Studios in Las Vegas would be closing and would be consolidated into EA Los Angeles. This split the Westwood team, with some members not willing to relocate and thus quitting and the rest moving to Los Angeles to work at the new consolidated studio, thus effectively stopping the development of Command & Conquer 3 for the time being.
In 2004, old concept art from Westwood was revealed, under the name "Command & Conquer 3". This artwork showed a mech unit, a fully 3-dimensional environment similar to that used in the game Generals, and the original interface system from both Command & Conquer and Tiberian Sun. This revealed artwork fueled speculation that EA was working on a Command & Conquer game, which in turn set off rumors as to when the game would ship and what the plot would be; however, in December of 2004, after the EALA team settled down, then Executive Producer and Command & Conquer lead Mark Skaggs announced in a mass e-mail that the next Command & Conquer game would be Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and not a long-awaited sequel to Tiberian Sun. However, shortly there after Skaggs left EA for reasons unknown[2] and ideas for Red Alert 3 were mothballed[3]. Westwood co-founder and EALA Vice President Louis Castle later became the new lead on Command & Conquer.
On April 18, 2006, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars was prematurely announced. On April 20, an official press release was made.
Concern over development
Since acquiring and shutting down Westwood Studios, EA Games has been responsible for the development of all games in the Command & Conquer universe, but the results of these games have at times been somewhat lacking.
Fans of the Tiberian universe were upset with the release of Red Alert 2, primarily because the C&C community generally views Red Alert as prequel to Command & Conquer. The release of Red Alert 2 left many questions about the interconnection of the Tiberian and Red Alert series unanswered, with debated theories over how this should best be resolved. Ex-Westwood Studios personnel claim to have been working on a timeline that would solve the mystery and clear the confusion, but such a timeline has never emerged. Another sore point of Red Alert 2 was its somewhat comical view of the war: video briefings seemed to lend humorous overtones, resulting in the ongoing war seemingly not being taken seriously by those involved in it.[citation needed]
Rumors over the C&C community have yielded the probability of Red Alert 3, with 3 factions similar to Tiberian Wars. The sides would be the classic Allies and Soviets, and the new (relative to their time line) Brotherhood of Nod. Each side was said to have a "trademark" tech: Prism and Chrono Tech with Allies, Tesla and Nuclear with the Soviets, and Stealth and Laser with Nod. This would tie in with the Tiberian universe as the Allies and Soviet would merge to become the Global Defense Initiative, while this is also the first introduction of the Brotherhood of Nod.
Three years after the release of Red Alert 2 came Command & Conquer Generals. Unlike previous C&C games, Generals and the Zero Hour expansion were developed by EA Los Angeles, after EA Games absorbed Westwood Studios. Longtime fans of the Command & Conquer universe were less than thrilled with changes EA implemented with Generals and Zero Hour. Generals departed from conventional Command and Conquer themes in several ways: The GDI, the Brotherhood of Nod, and the Tiberium resource were not present in this game. This game is not part of the 'Red Alert' theme either; it was an entirely separate game world. The game mechanics were more like other RTS games, such as Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft and the more recent Warcraft III. The control bar was moved to the bottom of the screen, the unique units for each faction (USA:Colonel Burton, China:Black Lotus, GLA:Jarmen Kell) resembled Warcraft III's Heroes, several units had special action buttons (cfr. the Warcraft series magic spells). Many units' attack and defense abilities could be upgraded in specific buildings much like in the Blizzard RTS games. There were no video briefings for upcoming missions, and the introduction of "middle men" met with some resistance. Unlike in the previous C&C games, a player could build as many superweapons as they had funds for; this last issue had been a major sore point for online players of Generals who frequently capped Superweapons (the game includes this option when setting up a server) or banned them altogether. In Zero Hour this ban was extended to include certain Generals personalities who were felt to be too powerful for use in online play. It should be noted that more experienced players usually frowned upon such artificial rules, noting that they often made balance even worse rather than improving it.
Many players also found the manner in which Generals latched onto topical issues in an overtly militaristic and pro-American fashion to be tasteless and insensitive. However, some argued that the stereotypes portrayed in the game extend to all three factions in a "tongue-in-cheek" manner in order to demonstrate political irony in today's world conflicts. For example, the US units say phrases such as "Preserving freedom!" and "We fight for peace!", not to mention "I'll fire at anything!". Chinese units, on the other hand, say patriotic phrases such as "China will grow larger!", "Foreign devils!" and "Fighting for the Red Army".
As a result of these changes, some fans of the series argue that Generals was not a true Command & Conquer game. Some were even going as far as to call it "Age of Generals" as a reference to the Age of Empires series by Microsoft Game Studios.
EA has not yet created and released a Command & Conquer game set in the Tiberian universe, although fans of the series are now wary of what the new game may look like. Most Westwood employees no longer work for EA Games. Although Electronic Arts has taken some liberties with the development of previous Command & Conquer games fans of the series remain cautiously optimistic that Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars will emerge as a successful game, capitalizing on previous C&Cs in the series.
External links
- Official Website
- Offical Tiberium Wars Forums
- Information from PlanetCNC
- Scans from the PC Gamer magazine from "Coolrock"
- IGN Interview with Mike Verdu
Fan Sites
- Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Forum and Fan Site
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Forums
- Old Westwood Concept art
- Information from CNCDen
- Information from CNC Generals World
- Information from CNCNZ.com
- Information from cncreneclips.com
- RTS World 2002 - C&C Fan Site
- RTS Forum - C&C Fan Forum
- Command and Conquer: Infiltration
Media
- ^ Tiberium Wars may be a working title, Mike Verdu, leader of the team working on C&C3, has stated the name is very good for the game, suggesting it might be a final name
- ^ The exact reason Mark Skaggs left EA remains unknown; according to EA he had taken "an extended leave of absence".
- ^ EA has not explicitly stated the Red Alert 3 has been cancelled; it is possible that an RA3 may be produced at some point in the future, but is still uncertain.